The Death of Diversity

Media Monopoly, by Wiretap Studios (Flickr)

One ironic consequence of the new media age is that as the digital revolution threatens to splinter mainstream media businesses, the pressure for “consolidation” (read: concentration) grows around the world.

It was a subject touched on by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, in his 2010 Andrew Olle media lecture, ‘The Splintering of the Fourth Estate’, delivered on Friday, November 19. Rusbridger spent much of the address musing on the consequences for journalism of the change in media from one-way transmission to multi-sided communication.

But he also devoted some time analysing the push from the corporate media and conservative politicians to silence or curb the online growth of public broadcasters, whilst campaigning through the legislature for a relaxation of ownership laws protecting media diversity.

“It is a sign of the current turmoil that one should have to argue a case that, at any other time in history, would have seemed too obvious to make: Too great a concentration of ownership in the media has always been considered a bad idea, whether you were on the right or the left,” Rusbridger said.

The Guardian editor cited the current furore in Britain over attempts by News Corp to buy the 61 percent of satellite broadcaster BSkyB that it does not already own. Success in this bid would give Murdoch’s empire control of nearly 40 per cent of Britain’s press as well as a broadcaster with nearly £6 billion ($A9.7 billion)  in revenues compared with the £3.5bn licence fee of the BBC.

The proposed further concentration of an already heavily concentrated UK media led to a special debate in the House of Lords this month, led by British film producer and sitting member Lord Puttnam.

“The level of media dominance that would result from News Corp’s ownership of 100 per cent of BSkyB, along with four national newspapers and a variety of other media assets, is one that would simply not be tolerated in almost any other developed democracy – certainly not in the United States,” Puttnam said.

Well, actually, the disturbing fact is that the level of concentration in the Australia media is even greater and that a similar trend is evident in the US. News Corp controls nearly 70 per cent of our capital city and national newspaper market, 80 percent of the Sunday newspaper market and 62 per cent of suburban newspapers. It has newspaper monopolies in Adelaide and Brisbane, operates Sky News with Nine and Seven, owns a quarter of the dominant pay television provider Foxtel and owns half of the national wire agency, AAP. Its voice speaks louder than any other, including Fairfax, and its ability to shape the news agenda is formidable.

As this parliamentary issues paper from 2006 details, while Canberra can impose restrictions on broadcasters through the license arrangements policed under the Broadcasting Services Act of 1992, its legislative reach on the newspaper market is limited to general competition law and foreign ownership provisions. Attempts to break News’ dominance and prompt discussion of its impact on media diversity have generally been muted by the fact of its omnipresence. Politicians see only downside in raising the issue and are easily swayed by powerful media lobbies. No-one is there to speak for the rights of civil society – for citizens (as distinct from consumers who express their preferences in the market).

As Bernard Keane noted in Crikey recently, media in Australia is currently becoming even more concentrated with the joint Lachlan Murdoch-James Packer raid on the Ten Network. Murdoch the younger sits on the News Ltd board and already controls 9 percent of regional television broadcaster Prime and 50 percent of radio network DMG.

Yet there are no signs of a local parliamentary debate on media concentration in Australia and one would be advised not to hold one’s breath anticipating such a move when politicians live in such fear of the media moguls and their power to make and break political careers.

As for the giant US market, the Federal Trade Commission has been considering exemptions from anti-trust  laws to provide a lifeline to a dying newspaper market. One proposal is to allow news organisations there to collaborate in erecting pay walls that would require consumers to pay for online content.

As one would expect, the idea has been fiercely opposed by aggregators such as Google who argue the newspapers are trying to mask a business problem as a legal problem. And in any case, the 4 billion clicks that Google sends to the MSM newspapers each month would be imperilled by pay walls.

In a recent academic paper, Maurice Stuck from the University of Tennessee’s College of Law argued the case strongly for no further watering down of US anti-trust laws, saying the health of democracy depends on greater competition among traditional media.

Alongside the proposed protections for newspapers from competition law, the House Republicans in the US are seeking to force a vote next week on cutting public funding to National Public Radio, and conveniently kill one of the few non-corporate media voices remaining in the land of the free.

For a local perspective on some of these issues, I recommend watching the recent debate, sponsored by Melbourne University Publishing, on ‘The Future of the Australian Media’. The debate features former Murdoch editor Bruce Guthrie , current Murdoch media writer Caroline Overington, Crikey publisher Eric Beecher and Media Watch host and Packer biographer Paul Barry.

Again, much of this debate is about the economics of digital publishing and the future of the traditional print business model, but the more interesting and more widely relevant – to my mind – angle (explored at the end of part one and into part two here) is what diminishing media diversity means for democracy. (By the way, I found it telling that in this debate Overington did not represent herself as a professional journalist but as a kind of PR spokeswoman for the Murdoch empire.)

The great irony in all of this is that the corporate media – partly in the name of protecting itself against amateur bloggers, aggregators and public broadcasters – is pushing regulators and politicians in Australia, in the UK and in the US to make its life easier by allowing it to become even more concentrated than it already is.

Only the bravest politician would stand in its way.

See also Bernard Keane: It’s Time to Revisit Media Diversity Laws